Missouri Girls class four final basketball ratings - March 23rd, 2021
I have "met" a lot of great people over this past year, during the pandemic, through social media and my basketball blog. One of my greatest supporters is @scoreboardGuy, Guy Newcomb, the sports radio guy down in Bolivar. a voice whom many in the southwest instantly recognize when they turn on their AM sports radio program. Guy has a huge following for his @scoreboardguy Twitter account, which posts high school sports scores from throughout the state. His posts were a great help in finding game results for my boy's and girl's rating models and his retweets of my ratings were immensely helpful in raising awareness of my polls. When I would tweet a rating, I might get several hundred hits. When @scoreboardguy would retweet, I might get 10,000 hits.
I wondered how Guy was doing the other day and gave him a call. I knew a little of his story (read here) but Guy told me about some of his early life experiences and I was flabbergasted. Turns out that eight-year-old boys are pretty naive little guys. sic
When I was eight, and yes this dates me, there was a large sports festival at the new indoor mall in Edina, Minnesota. In 1957, the Southdale Mall was the first indoor mall in the United States. To draw people to the mall, they had this sports festival and brought in big-name sports figures from around the country so that people would come to see them and listen to them speak. I had my thirty-page booklet with biographies about each person, including George Mikan, 6'10" center for the Minneapolis Lakers, Willie Mosconi, the billiards or pool champ, and Bob Mathias, the 1948 and 1952 Olympic decathlete gold medalist, amongst others. I dutifully went around and got their autographs, although, as a naive eight-year-old, I had NO idea who these people were or what they had accomplished.
Guy Newcomb told me a similar story. Guy grew up and went to Mount Vernon high school. As an eight-year-old, he would come to St. Louis to visit his grandfather, who built the first Busch Stadium, and his uncle, or great uncle, a guy named Stan. Stan Musial. Stan the Man.
Guy didn't know what Stan had done for a living. Guy was just a clueless eight-year-old. He didn't know Stan was the Man for the Cardinals for over 20 years. An All-Star. A future Hall of Famer. He just thought it was great that he and Grandpa could sit with Stan at the Cardinal games and have some fun. Wouldn't it be great to be eight and naive again?
Well, being a Mount Vernon grad, I wondered how Guy had taken the bitter defeat of the Mountaineers to the upstart Boonville girls on Saturday. Guy had been down at Lake of the Ozarks and been listening to the game until it was 45-22 in the third quarter and he turned the radio off. That was about the time I tuned in on the MSHSAA broadcast and watched Mount Vernon launch one of the greatest comebacks of all time, getting within 3 or 4 in the last few seconds but missing a couple of chances to tie before time expired. What an exciting game! I couldn't believe how great both of these teams played.
Hats off to all the class four girls basketball teams. And Thank You, Guy. For helping me out all year long with my basketball ratings.
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